State Govt launches arms licence verification

    19-Apr-2025
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Imphal, Apr 19
The Manipur Government has launched a drive to verify the licensed arms and asked all the district administrations to examine the papers of the arms license holders and arms dealers, officials said on Saturday.
A senior official said that the Commissioner (Home) has, in an urgent circular, asked the Deputy Commissioners of all 16 districts to take steps to verify the papers of arms license holders and arms dealers in their respective districts.
Accordingly, all the De-puty Commissioners direc- ted the arms license holders and arms dealers to submit their papers o their nearest or respective police stations on or before April 25. “Non-compliance with the orders may lead to penalisation and cancellation of arms licen-se,” the official said, refer- ring to the circular of the Commissioner (Home).
Till March 6, around 1,000 looted and illegally held weapons, including many sophisticated arms, and a huge cache of ammunition, have been returned to the security forces since Manipur Governor Ajay Kumar Bhalla appealed for the first time on February 20.
The initiative to recover the looted and illegally held arms began on May 31, 2023, when former Chief Minister N Biren Singh made an appeal to all concerned to surrender the firearms looted from security forces and police armouries.
Officials said that before Singh’s resignation as Chief Minister on February 9, a total of 3,422 firearms had been voluntarily surrendered to the authorities and police stations in different districts.
Various official reports, political parties claimed that during the ethnic riots, which broke out in Manipur on May 3, 2023, over 6,020 varied types of sophisticated arms and different types of ammunition were looted from the police stations and outposts by the mobs, attackers and militants.  IANS